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In an ongoing court case that was filed by the DOJ last year Apple is alleged to have been a "ringmaster" in price fixing for eBooks, including an e-mail from Steve Jobs to Harper Collins, as part of an attempt to move Apple off of it's standard rate of $9.99 a book.

This is the rest of the story of the Wired.com writer who got hacked. It's really alarming how easily this was done and also the *why*. The hackers just liked his 3 character twitter user name (there obviously aren't a lot of short twitter user names) and were out to hijack it. Dude lost the photos of his kids first year and loads of other irreplaceable stuff when they remote wiped his phone and laptop to prevent him from taking his twitter account back.

A federal judge ruled that Apple "conspired to raise the retail price of e-books" in a civil lawsuit brought by the Justice Department.

This was an interesting session about using Apple Configurator to maintain a pool of iPads for circulation to autistic students. The good side is customization can be done and quickly, the downside is a one-to-one ratio for apps licenses and iPads, a steep learning curve to the Configurator software, and being limited to what apps Apple provides.

We're at the dawn of the tablet era now. Earlier this month, Apple sold 3 million of its new iPad during the opening weekend, with some analysts expecting over 60 million of the tablets to be sold worldwide. What's more, e-book readers are selling even more briskly than tablets.

I heard today that after the Govmn't sued Apple and 5 ebook publishers for colluding to keep pricing favorable, 3 of the 5 publishers have already settled out of court. I wonder if Apple thinks they have a strong enough case...

In good news for readers and libraries, Macmillan, the last of five major publishers in an anti-trust lawsuit, have settled with the DOJ. This means that retailers can begin discounting digital titles they have for sale. Apple is the only publisher still outstanding in the lawsuit.

The insights in this article were interesting, given that they coming from a trade publication.   I do think Brantley is absolutely right, but I'm not sure what that means for libraries.  The fact still remains that a lot of bestsellers and popular works-- which are still associated with libraries-- are squarely in the hands of the Big Six (Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillian, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster) and it's yet unclear how a large number of independent publishers will have any effect.

"The main floor looks more like a sleek Apple showroom than a stuffy library. And instead of a Genius Bar, there's an Ask Me alcove, where you can get help on everything from laptops to flash drives. Rather than the Dewey system, color-coded walls, stairs and elevators help you find not just books and research papers, but also media rooms, video game collections and even a 3-D printing lab to create plastic models. But the best part? Built with state funds and private donations, it's open to the public. Welcome to the library of the future."

An article that mainly repeats many current trends in libraries but is notable for appearing in a mainstream publication (Time Magazine) and being surprisingly aware of some new developments such as maker culture.

Not actually a hoax.  (In case you were, you know, tempted to eat library paste.)